Many organizations wish to identify persons that call the organization to request information or some other form of assistance. It is often desirable for organizations to identify such callers for security, billing, record keeping, or other purposes. For example, a customer service representative for a mail order sales organization might identify a caller to verify the caller's authority to receive information concerning an order placed with the organization.
As organizations become larger and more complex to serve a variety of customer and information requirements, organizations may desire to identify callers using a variety of techniques. A known technique for identifying a caller receives a telephone number associated with an incoming call and compares the number with previously stored information to identify the caller associated with the incoming call. These techniques may be unsatisfactory if the caller is calling from a telephone, extension, or location having a telephone number that is different than the number for which there is previously stored information. Other techniques may even compare a spoken word or phrase identifying the caller with a stored voice print to verify an identification made as result of personal interaction with the caller. Although these techniques may be acceptable to verify the identity of an identified caller, these techniques do not identify an unidentified caller out of a universe of known callers. Furthermore, techniques that require personal interaction with the caller to generate information for comparison with stored identification information are often relatively inefficient and costly.